Metropoulos Forum

Just heard that Ken Fisher passed away this past Saturday. The music world has lost another great icon. RIP.

I just saw this posted on the PP forum. This is very sad news. He was someone I looked up to in amp building.

Yeah thats bad news, He was great with amps, and am sure many family and friends are really hurting. God bless them all.

I think I told my Ken Fischer story in the other amps section one time.
Living in Pennsylvania,the tri-state area,Jersey,Philadelphia,and Maryland were all close.Ken lived in New Jersey,was famous from the Ampeg days with Dennis Kagan,but Ken took everything much further.
In fact George M. is the only other person who in recent memory,reminds me of Ken.
When I had my Music Ground Marshalls in Pa.,I had loads of questions about the early Super Leads,Basses,and my JTM45,that the tube amp book couldn't answer.I obtained Ken's number from in the amp world,and had a very memorable long phone call with him.Since I was in nursing school at the time,I tried giving him some suggestions for the horroble,energy sapping disease that he had.He could barely muster to get out of bed and talk on the phone many days,so any time he gave you was golden.His famous Trainwreck amps were the premier boutique amps ,when there were no boutique amps,other than Mesa Boogie perhaps,but they aren't amps to me.,
He was the nicest person to talk to,very patient,and he never made you feel technically inadequate.I asked him a lot about my 1967 JTM Super Bass that Flames has recreated recently,and also my JTM45.Ken loved old Marshalls and had a photographic memory about their circuits and what to do to check things and how to get the best out of a Marshall.
Ken also loved Voxes and his beloved Trainwreck Liverpool Express was heavily a Vox tribute,way before Matchless,ect.
The amp/music world has lost a truly great inovator and who kept his hand still in the business as much as he could with his terrible debilitating illness,which he must have contracted in the early manufacturing days,from some type of industrial exposure.
Ken spoke with me over an hour or so on the phone,he was fascinated by my background,living in England and visiting J&T Marshall's early shop,which I told him all about.
The tube amp book is filled with Ken's circuit innovators,and every amp builder on this forum owes a debt to Ken for the path he blazed,the aluminum chassis,his Marshall circuit mods,he as I said loved Voxes and when I obtained my beloved Jennings Vox AC15 he was excited about that amp,and we discussed the EF86 circuit in that amp,which I personally love.An aquaintance we knew in Penn.,actually went to Ken's house in I think it was Red Bank,N.J. and conducted a long interview with Ken about all of his history and his Trainwrecks,it was published in Vintage Guitar at the time and I hope they reprint it as a tribute,with his passing.
Thanks Ken,for being a true innovator and all around nice guy,you will be sorely missed.

http://www.trainwreck.com/

http://www.lynx.bc.ca/~jc/KenFischer.html



yngwie308

oh man

I was just thinking this morning after reading that Gerald ford died. I thought "James Brown, Ford...these things come in three's. Who's next...."

Dave, I saw many posts that Ken was sick and always very fatuiqed (sp?). Do you know what it actually was?

Sad day indeed.

Mike,I think he told me that it was a type of chronic fatigue syndrome,or an associated immune disorder.He had no energy and had to give up the amp building to colleagues.This was back in the late eighties into early nineties,so this has probably been a long horrible drawn out thing with much suffering.
All amp builders owe a debt to Ken,who freely shared a lot of his circuit information,before there was an internet,yet no Trainwreck 'clones',would sound like the original ones he built,to me they are rarer and better than Dumbles and no epoxy goop over the components!
I will never forget talking to him,it was like being in touch with a super guru of amp history!
I am actually suprised to hear he was still alive,to be brutally frank.
The medication I must take to control my joint deformation suppresses my immune system and inhibits the bodies ability to wall off tumors,especially lymphomas.My price to pay is having a run down feeling all the time,often feeling like you are coming down with something,chills,flu like symptoms,but I pray every day that I will be able to work and provide for my family.I have so much empathy for Ken,at the time I didn't know I had my psoriatic arthritis,which I was born with,and I thought to myself about Ken,how horrible it must be to live with a debilitating illness,and then in the late nineties,I found out myself.
But what I knew of Ken's condition when I knew him,the doctors couldn't treat his malady.
I care for the sick and diseased every day,that's my carreer by choice now,and ironically I have become a patient back in my forties.
Let's all enjoy our lives and loved ones,especially at this precious time of year.
yngwie308

This is a terrible loss. We amp builders owe lot to Ken. I still remember a time when the things he did were written off by most techs as ridiculous. Now most of us swear by his techniques.

A sad passing.

george

does anybody know the actual cause of death? i know he had "cfs" they thought i had it about ten years ago. it's another illness that they really still don't understand & diagnose by symptoms basically. my heart goes out to ya' 308, my wife has crohns & so we're doing the imuran (immune sys suppressor) test rat thang.

45,I don't know cause of death,I would have to research it.Thank you for your kind words,gotta keep keepin' on,any medical questions shoot em to me!
yngwie308

Very sad. This comes close on the heels of Gar Gillies passing from cancer, as well.